Experiences I encountered in the world of telecom…

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Apps That We Don’t Dream Of

This morning, I sat up with my news renderer – my iPad – through which the news from across the world comes to my bedside at the speed of light. I worked my way through RSS feeds, mails and Business Network news and Social Network news – in that order. (This has become a routine now rendering the morning paper redundant.)

Fired off a few comments on world-happenings and settled down to the fun part; scouting for humorous and unusual posts. It was then that I came across an App called the DreamBoard (for iPhone/iPod; not available for iPad). See www.dreamboard.com

So, what is DreamBoard about…

It is an app in which one could maintain a journal of dreams… not the aspiration kind of dreams, but the kind that comes when we are asleep!

One can record the date on which a dream occurred like a journal entry, associate a mood, emotions, colour, tag people/ places / things, indicate what we role we played in the dream, a weirdness rating, themes and a description of the dreams.
The app is in its first version and has a long way to go to be called a good user experience – for e.g. one can’t edit the dreams once entered even if they want to refine some part of it and invariably, despite knowing this limitation, somehow one ends up clicking the “Done” button while making the various choices (too many popups, may be).

However, it is not to criticize the app that I thought of writing about this. I am sure, that future updates would be available that would make the app better and wish the makers success.

It is about the concept of this product and why I downloaded it that I want to ponder over…

What is intriguing about the product?

It is not common for a journals of dreams and nightmares kept; so I wonder what prompted the idea in the first place; what is the demand that prompted the set of experts to come together to make this app!

Neither the website nor the app on the device has an ad-banner (as of time of this post) – so, the revenue model for this effort is something that is not clear

I really wonder if any of my software providers – the big companies that have fuelled my work life and personal life would have ever brought out an app of this nature in my wildest dreams in a hundred years!

Now you would wonder why I downloaded this app…

Outwardly, I was intrigued by the concept and wanted to see what it was all about

I am interested in this topic – having browsed through Freud’s “The Interpretation of Dreams” on a couple of occasion – not an expert but a dabbler.

It was free to try; will I pay for it? May be – depends on what I get out of it!

I generalized these thoughts and came to the following conclusions:

One doesn’t realize demand for a solution / product even when one is actually part of the long-tail that consumes it

In today’s world tapping into the global market is fairly easy through app-stores

Large corporations in their wildest dreams are not going to come up with these ideas

Applications can be designed and distributed to indulge in passing fancies of individuals too and people (like me) will download it!

If more such apps are successful, the future may not need large corporations – with their patent wars, stuff and nonsense – just start ups with niche applications who, if their idea clicks, may go on to form the next set of large corporations

Tongue-in-cheek: Given the IT Laws of the land and the amount of censorship establishments are trying to impose on Social Media, one wonders if we should be careful about what we dream too 🙂